From Seth Godin in his though-provoking blog, asking how we define the value of education. His thoughts below, and more here: While a high-status college admission confers a measure of status, it doesnt automatically grant a great education. Sometimes, a student gets both, but not always. Because learning is taken as much as given. Along […]
January 22, 2019 at 3:45 pm
As we welcome students from break and from Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we offer some timely thoughts from the Boston University alum. In his paper “The Purpose of Education,” King argues for education that extends beyond logic into an more enlightened education of the soul. While education must help people achieve their goals, he […]
December 14, 2018 at 12:11 pm
I dare you to get a B in this class. That’s what Adam Grant is telling straight-A students. Pushing back against the “cult of perfectionism” cultivated around education, Grant claims that students who aim for perfect transcripts often avoid taking risks, miss opportunities for failure and growth, and neglect emotional and social growth.Advisors and parents […]
November 13, 2016 at 4:05 pm
In his first hundred days as President, Donald Trumps plans to shutter the Department of Education. Top legal scholar, Laurence Tribe, has regrettably affirmed that there is no constitutional limitation against such an action. Assuming that Congress will give its consent, and that we make it past the first 100 days, this seems dangerously likely. […]
October 28, 2013 at 2:26 pm
Relating to the frustratingly constant and reliable doubts that some students feel toward their majors, is an article from the Wall Street Journal discussing the choice of field. Their claim is that mathematics and science majors are relatively popular – until of course, students realize ‘what they are in for’. Here is an excerpt: The researchers […]
August 14, 2013 at 9:02 pm
In an engaging article for New Republic, the acclaimed psychologist, linguist and author Steven Pinker discusses the underlying dislike of science residing in some “humanities people”. This matter is especially relevant to the integrated way sciences and humanities and learned in the Core. Here is an extract from Pinker’s introduction: These thinkers—Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Locke, […]
February 8, 2012 at 1:32 pm
Erin McDonagh (Core ’08, CAS ’10), a member of the EnCore steering committee, writes: In this article by Carlos Fraenkel of Boston Review, we learn that Brazil’s public education policy has surprising stipulation: According to a 2008 law, students are required to study philosophy for three years in high school. The law is a political […]
February 25, 2011 at 5:51 pm
The 1940 Census had revealed that some 10 million Americans had not been schooled past the fourth grade, and that one in eight could not read or write. This, primarily, was a southern problem. A higher proportion of blacks living in the North had completed grade school than whites in the South. — Ira Katznelson, […]
